Mary Barrett Dyer, my ancestor 12 generations ago, was an American pioneer, city co-founder, Puritan and Antinomian Bible study leader, Quaker minister, wife, mother of five living children, expelled from Massachusetts Colony six times, was twice taken bound to the scaffold, and finally executed by hanging for civil disobedience. A memorial statue of Mary is located facing the Boston Common.

William’s and Mary’s timeline:
.....William Dyer born/baptized: 19 Sep 1609, Kirkby Lathrope, Lincolnshire, England. This is modern Kirkby La Thorpe, between Sleaford and Boston.
.....1611? Mary Barrett born. No record of parents or birthplace.
.....1625 William apprenticed at age 16 as fishmonger in London, retroactive to 1624. The Worshipful Company of Fishmongers guild was considered prestigious.
.....10-27-1633 After his 9 years of apprenticeship, Mary Barrett (approx age 22) marries William Dyer at St Martin in the Fields church, London. William is milliner selling scabbards, leather goods, etc. in New Exchange (a high-end shopping mall near the Strand). This is less than a mile from St Martin in the Fields church, in which parish they lived......10-24-1634 Son William born/baptized in London, buried 3 days later on his parents' first wedding anniversary. This church was destroyed in London’s Great Fire, and rebuilt in a baroque design. However, the marble baptismal font and a wooden trunk predating the fire survive to the present.
.....1634/1635 winter. William and Mary emigrate to Boston.
.....3-3-1635 William takes Freeman oath in Boston.
.....1635 summer. 39,000 people die in plague epidemic in London.
.....10-20-1635 Son Samuel born and baptized in Boston.
.....1635/6 William granted land in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
.....1636 Mary joins Anne Marbury Hutchinson (whom William’s family knew in Lincolnshire) in “heresy” that God speaks to people (“Light”), that we are saved by faith not good works, that Christians are not bound by the moral law (antinomianism), that women and men are equal before God, that each individual should interpret law by own conscience, that Indian slavery was wrong (against Massachusetts Bay Company policy); Mary organizes women’s study/discussion groups, antagonizing Gov Winthrop......10-17-1637 Mary gave birth to stillborn, deformed baby girl, two months prematurely. Anne Hutchinson is midwife. Based on Winthrop’s description, baby had anencephaly and other malformations, according to a neurologist (see below).
.....11-15-1637 William disfranchised from First Church of Boston for “seditious writing.” Gov Winthrop says, "The wife of one William Dyer, a milliner in the New Exchange, a very proper and fair woman, and both of them notoriously infected with Mrs. Hutchinson's errors and very censorious and troublesome."
.....1638 Dyers and Hutchinsons banished from Boston, have deadline of May 1 to be out of Boston. They move to Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
.....3-?-1638 In March, Gov Winthrop learns of stillborn baby. Probably at spring thaw, "monster" baby exhumed by Gov Winthrop; baby's deformity called evidence that Mary was heretic. (See below)
.....3-7-1638 William signs Portsmouth Compact. Becomes clerk of Portsmouth.
.....1640 Son William (second child by that name) born in Newport, Rhode Island.
.....1642 and 1644 Governor Winthrop’s account of stillborn baby’s deformation published in England. (English tabloid journalism! And why was Winthrop so vindictive as to pursue this for YEARS after the Dyers left?) “it was of ordinary bigness; it had a face, but no head, and the ears stood upon the shoulders and were like an ape’s; it had no forehead, but over the eyes four horns, hard and sharp; two of them were above one inch long, the other two shorter; the eyes standing out, and the mouth also; the nose hooked upward; all over the breast and back full of sharp pricks and scales, like a thornback [i.e., a skate or ray], the navel and all the belly, with the distinction of the sex, were where the back should be, and the back and hips before, where the belly should have been; behind, between the shoulders, it had two mouths, and in each of them a piece of red flesh sticking out; it had arms and legs as other children; but, instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws, like a young fowl, with sharp talons.”

Norman McNulty, MD, neurologist, says: “Interesting. Anencephaly is certainly part of the picture and it was probably some non-inheritable congenital malformation that led to this malformation. Sometimes, in utero strokes very early in development lead to lack of development of brain tissue (anencephaly) which is probably what happened here.”

.....1643 Son Mahershallhashbaz born Newport, Rhode Island
.....1647 Son Henry born Newport, Rhode Island
.....1648 or 1649 Daughter Mary born Newport, Rhode Island. William is Attorney General.
.....1650 Son Charles born Newport, Rhode Island. Charles is my ancestor. He is Mary’s last child at about age 41.
.....1652 Mary and William sail to England with Roger Williams, to revoke some of Gov Coddington’s powers. William Dyer returns same year and continues political and civil career. Mary stays in England five years, studying Quaker beliefs with George Fox, who preached all over England, but seems to have been based in the northwest part of England. More info on George Fox: http://www.strecorsoc.org/gfox/title.html
This is the Parliamentary period, with Cromwell the Lord Protector ruling after execution of Charles I in 1649.
.....1657 Mary sails back to America via Barbados, landing in Boston, unaware of Gov Endecott’s new laws regarding Quakers. On arriving in Boston in 1657 she is imprisoned for 7-8 weeks in dirt-floored cell, depriving William of wife, and children of their mother. William writes eloquent and touching letter on her behalf; she is released. On the petition of her husband was permitted to go with him to Rhode Island, but never to return to Massachusetts.
.....1658 Mary and William travel to Boston, protesting Gov Endecott’s new law banning Quakers. Mary arrested and expelled from colony. William not arrested because he’s not Quaker, and he’s a public official in Rhode Island.
.....1658 Mary arrested in New Haven, Connecticut for preaching.
.....1659, summer. She walks through forest from Providence to Boston, a distance of 39 miles, to visit fellow Quakers in jail.
.....1659, September. Mary arrested and permanently banished from Massachusetts Colony.
.....1659, October. Mary returns to Boston to visit Quakers, arrested and sentenced to death. She, with William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson was tried and convicted for "their rebellion, sedition and presumptuous obtruding upon us notwithstanding their being sentenced to banishment on payne of death, as underminers of the government." Robinson and Stevenson were executed October 27, but through the petition of her son, William Dyre (son William was Mayor of New York in 1680 so accounts have his title as Mayor—but he was not Boston mayor at age 19), she was reprieved on the same conditions as before. Mary Dyer also stepped up the ladder, her face was covered and the halter put round her neck, when the cry was raised, "Stop! for she is reprieved." She was again banished. Released to custody of husband after husband William’s 8-30-1659 letter and son William’s October 1659 letter. Mary writes after the death of Robinson and Stevenson: "When I heard your last Order read, it was a disturbance unto me, that was so freely Offering up my life to him that give it me, and sent me hither to do, which Obedience being his own Work, he gloriously accompanied with his Presence, and Peace, and Love in me, in which I rested from my labour, till by your Order, and the People, I was so far disturbed, that I could not retain anymore of the words thereof, than that I should return to Prison, and there remain Forty and Eight hours; to which I submitted, finding nothing from the Lord to the contrary, that I may know what his Pleasure and Counsel is concerning me, on whom I wait therefore, for he is my Life, and the length of my Days, and as I said before, I came at his command, and go at His command.".....1659 Mary returns to Rhode Island, preaches on Long Island, New York. Also asked to preach Quaker beliefs to Indians on Shelter Island.
.....4-?-1660 Mary returns to Boston without telling husband. (She’d been expelled several times already.) Arrested.
.....5-31-1660 Convicted, sentenced to death.
.....6-1-1660 Mary hanged on Boston Common, aged about 49 years, leaving children aged 10 to 25.
.....1661 William marries Catharine _______. Nothing is known of her.
.....1662 William and Catharine have child Elizabeth.
.....1676/1677 William dies.
.....1959 Memorial statue to Mary Barrett Dyer erected in Boston, facing the Common.
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Ancestry lines:William Dyer b. 1609, Lincolnshire.
.....Father: William Dyer, farmer/landowner and church warden, son of John Dyer and Jane Ernley.....Mother: Dorothy Shirley (maybe)

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About Me

Christy is an author and editor whose biographical novels and nonfiction book on William and Mary Dyer were published in 2013 and 2014. Her hardcover book "We Shall Be Changed" (2010 Review & Herald) is also available. In September 2015 she published "Effigy Hunter," a nonfiction history and travel guide, and will follow that with a nonfiction book on Anne Hutchinson, then a historical novel set in England in the 1640s-1660s.